whew!

It’s been a very busy 4 weeks, but we have now picked all our grapes for 2009.  Overall this year was a huge success, great weather and a new vineyard manager (Kathy) have resulted in the best crop ever.

Our Ortega, Pinot Gris & Pinot Noir were the ripest they’ve ever been.  Our Bacchus & Gewurtztraminer hit the specifications we wanted for sparkling wine before the end of September.  After only receiving 1825 growing degree days in 2008, we accumulated over 2200 this year (25% more heat = much riper grapes).

In addition to being riper than we’ve ever picked, the grapes were also in fabulous condition - no botrytis or powdery mildew in any of our grapes - except a tiny amount on our Pinot Noir (the result of hanging for a week in the cold & rain after thankgiving).  But even that amount was trivial and won’t cause any issues in the winery.

Those really ripe grapes should translate into really tasty wines this coming year.  Good news for fans of our Rose & Sparkling wines - we’re making them again this year.  We managed to find extra pinot noir from a vineyard close by, and turned it into rose.  We also picked our Bacchus & Gewurtz specifically to make sparkling.  We also picked a small crop of really ripe Tempranillo from a vineyard a few kilometers from us.  Yes, Tempranillo on Vancouver Island!  The clusters can be enormous.  Thanks to Sue for giving me the first opportunity to make an Island Tempranillo.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Blog Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.